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Sitecore site that is easy to use for Editors, developers and users is considered as best Implementation, we should always consider content editors while designing Sitecore, because any change afterwords can results in lot of back and forth and cost as well.

I would like to share my thoughts based on real time experience, and i think we should try to consider these in every project from beginning.

Experience Editor : Sitecore setup cannot be considered as complete or good, unless all the components are Experience Editor (Page Editor)friendly, this includes:

Should be able to add components and datasource.

Making sure components can be moved.

Should be able to set the personalization.

Should be able to configure test.

Proper configuration of placeholders, which takes care of adding relevant components in proper section of the page.

Edit page metadata.

Editor should be able to add field values from Experience editor like (background Image, multi-list fields and etc)

A fully functional experience editor page is the first sign which shows your commitment towards client and quality of your delivery, and same time you are also making use of Sitecore at it’s best.

Insert Rules:

Insert rules helps establishing information architecture of content tree, which increases consistency, with Insert rules you can restrict what content types can be added under specific location of content tree, which helps in defining scope and helps running queries as well.

We can go to Configure -> Assign and set the Insert options, we also have a way to dynamically define it by using “Insert Option Rules“.

Insert rules helps your content author, and guide them how and what can be added into specific location of content tree, this will help reducing any type of content error in the site, assist developers to define scope while writing programs which makes your code more stable.

Standard Values: The standard values item is an item of the given template type, which will be used to hold the default field values.

By defining default values we can make sure to pre-populate the standard field values, so that content authors doesn’t have to populate it over and over again.

We can set the default values explicitly, or use of token is a also a great way to populate the values.

We can populate following fields every time when new item gets created in Sitecore:

Title

Description

Date (if exists)

This a great way to help content authors to give them a feel that page doesn’t looks incomplete while adding a new page to content tree, and editors can of course go back and change the default values if required, you can configure default data sources for you renderings in required.

Help text : How content authors are comfortable with Sitecore, determines if your Implementation is successful, so, as a developer we always have to think about content author experience, and that should be our high priority.

We should make sure field labels are optimized in such a way they serve the needs of both the developer as well as the content editors, we can achieve this following three ways:

Title

Short description and

Help link

The title field and the short description of a field item enable us to provide the content editor with useful information and have a technical field name for developers to work with.

If you go to specific field item in Sitecore, you can set these values which helps content authors in understanding what this field is meant for, and what value should be added.

Clean Sitecore tree:

A clean Information structure helps in making Site more consistent, and we should always remember that site will be used by content editors and not by developers, so it should be as clean as possible.

A new content editor, who just joined the team shouldn’t find any difficulty understanding the site, and it’s component structure.

Good information architecture is a key to successful Sitecore Implementation and maintenance.

Components/placeholder configuration(s):

Proper configuration should be done for placeholders, so that content authors can add only those components which are meat for specific placeholder, this way we can make sure to maintain the design, and can prevent any sort of compatibility issues with the page.

We can use allowed control that exists on the placeholder level, which defines the list of component(s) which can be added.

Also, on each rendering we should define “datasource location” and “datasource template” which helps content authors to understand that these data items are compatible for specific rendering(s).

Thumbnail for Renderings:

We should try to add thumbnails for all renderings, so that content authors can visualize that what rendering is meant for what, if there are no thumbnails added, it can creates a confusion to content editors, in case if no friendly names has been given to renderings.

If friendly name has been given, it still makes more sense and add value to assign thumbnails.

As a Sitecore consultant and developer, we should keep an eye on every part of your solution from day 1, this helps you in understanding the system as a whole, and also gives you an opportunity to make sure that best practices has been followed while developing the solution,and also that we are using Sitecore features at it’s best.